07/03/2026
On International Women’s Day I want to celebrate my business partner Florence Hallet. This crazy, driven, intelligent, bold, powerful, determined, funny woman stepped into my life around 5 years ago… I got a message from my school friend saying she and Matt were staying with friends in and they were trying to bring their wines to Australia and could I help. At the time I was working as a Wine Broker for For over 4 years I put Florence in touch with wine merchants, Negotiants, importers, international wine buyers and people I thought could help her achieve this dream. She was persistent and she never gave up. She called and emailed me every 6 months until finally in March last year I said maybe I am the one who can get these wines into the country. I said send me some samples and let’s go from there. The samples arrived in dribs and drabs stuck on ships, lost, returned to France but still she never gave up. After tasting the wines I knew they were special so I said I will call some venues and get in front of some people and see what they say and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Then we needed a liquor license and a place to house the wines so she started calling people and reached out to the French embassy which is how we found Nathalie. Then we needed a plan so she collaborated with the 8 wineries to share the shipping costs to bring them to Australia. I was busy designing our logo and working on where we should range the wines. She got her partner Geoff who is mates with my school friend Nicole’s partner Matt to set about designing us a website… I thought we should do an East Coast road trip, so again Florence went back to the producers to get funding for this whilst I planned the itinerary, booked accommodation, researched bars and restaurants, connected with my linked in community and friends and meticulously planned 2.5 week road/bus/plane trip across 4 states. We met, Nicole, Matt, Geoff, Florence and myself at our first Australian East Coast venue to place an order of 10 of our 27 wines even before they had arrived in Adelaide. 2.5 weeks, 60+ venues. WOW!! Proud is an understatement… 🩷🩷🩷
